Training Wheels
by Eternal-Night-Ride
Summary: "With ideas and beliefs as optimistic as those Tennyson cousins', it would've been easy if he hadn't been suckered into his own game. Suckered so far into it he started believing he was normal. Kevin Eleven. Normal. Twilight zone."


**Training Wheels**

Summary: "With ideas and beliefs as optimistic as those Tennyson cousins, it would've been easy if he hadn't been suckered into his own game. Suckered so far into it he started believing he was _normal_.

Kevin Eleven. Normal. Twilight zone."

Pairing: Gwevin

Warning: Dark humor

* * *

He was stumbling towards it. Like he was actually using training wheels for it. What he learned, he expressed explosively.

"_He trusted you!" _

Finally bridging that line to empathy. When he identified, he identified all too well.

"_I don't need to read minds to know what you're thinking! Even I was like you!"_

They were new sensations. Them being so new, he had originally considered them threatening. Frightening. They were far more difficult to handle or control than the process of blocking them out and just blaming everything else but himself. Sometimes, he played with the idea of just dropping them and taking it easy. Back in the good old days of wanting the world to burn and not really giving a damn. _Freak_ that he was and everything.

He'd told himself that he'd show the world for being the unfair ball of cruelty and injustice that it was to him. The point was all that emotion crud was only useful to people who could afford to let their guard down. Not him.

Oh, it wasn't that he was born without emotions. He felt them and nowadays he felt them so bad that he scared himself. It was just that, when a person lived on the streets of New York at eleven, when a person had parents who would kick said person out for having powers, when a person lived with other kids that enjoyed the idea of making this particular freak's life a living hell - well, he had to protect himself somehow. The best way he could think of solving that, involved telling the bits in his brain that were a tad squeamish to _shut up_.

Dealing his own brand of justice made sense. If the world couldn't give him that justice and mercy crap then he shouldn't be obligated to give 'em either.

There was nobody else to look out for him so looking out for himself was first priority. Money, vengeance, a freakin' roof over his head. He gave himself those things and he was damn proud of it. When there was nothing to feel liable about, nothing to feel guilty of, nothing to feel, things were easy.

Then he met that kid with the weird watch again.

He'd never really understood Ben.

Back in their first meeting, he tried to manipulate the kid to do what he wanted. Usual shtick: except with a much stronger, more valuable pawn. The kid was just too _easy_. Enthusiastic for friendship - _what a dope _- wide-eyed; kinda stupid really. Weird watch kid had a lot of things going for him, though, when he was willing to play along. Then the kid backed out when he suggested they crash some trains to get loads of money. He was so pissed because things didn't work out as planned. Then the idiot had the audacity to invite him to come with them, like it was just easy enough to bounce to the happy sunset with the freakin' rainbow farting unicorns on.

He'd gone ahead and done everything in his power to try and get rid of the kid 'cause he needed to regret crossing him.

Funny. He barely registered Ben's cousin back then. She was just this other kid and it was easy enough to threaten her life to get his kicks out of torturing Ben. Back then, it wasn't hard. He would've lived up to it. Easily.

It was difficult to reconcile the fact that nowadays, he'd just as soon burn the world before anything happened to her. Even weirder, was that he'd stop wanting to burn the world just for her.

At first, he had things planned. Now he wasn't one of those big politicians with the extra complicated plans. That would just give him a headache. He was more the plan a little bit then go with the flow kinda guy. If things went boom like planned, then awesome. Maybe that was to blame for the change.

He hadn't really thought about Gwen being such a big spanner in the works. A touch on the shoulder here, a look, a little pep talk, a smile. Then he was totally screwed over. Things got less definite. Plans got scrapped. Betraying the weird kid with the watch got harder when there was another pair of green eyes looking at him thinking he would never do that. It wasn't that she was actively trying to change him either, just that he was changing for her. Which was stupid and crazy and new.

Maybe he got old. Got bored with trying to burn the world. It was stupid and he should have known better than to try to get conned to the fluffy idea of happy endings. Or maybe he just got bored with lying to everyone and started the new game of lying to himself. He gotta admit, he was real _convincing_.

Maybe it started off trying to leach off the extremely easy Tennyson cousins. With ideas and beliefs as optimistic as theirs, it would've been easy if he hadn't been suckered into his own game. Suckered so far into it he started believing he was _normal_.

Kevin Eleven. Normal. Twilight zone.

Then again spending enough time trying to convince himself as being part of the team and having honed the skill of lying for years was a deadly cocktail. After enough time being 'team-mates' and he was just gone. It was difficult to reconcile this new him with the old, other him. Even he couldn't connect the dots because he'd lied too well.

Gwen made the habit of making things worse. She would be nice, interesting, pretty, bossy, frustrating. And he would be caught. If he was old Kevin, he'd be going 'Love 'em and leave 'em' and bash 'em a little too. But new Kevin thought she was special. Maybe if he pushed himself and worked a little harder to get to that empathy and understanding stuff, he'd get normal enough to _keep her_.

Sure, he still wasn't an expert on relationships and whatever. He might even have been a bit of a social retard. The only thing that was making the torture of going through normalcy was that he had her practically holding his hand. She was smart so she would be wonderful at teaching. Sort of. Well, she was better at it than him anyway.

Recently he's just patched up his relationship with his mom. He couldn't even remember how long it had been since he did something so bad his parents had to kick him out. Not that he regretted whatever he did at that time. He just wasn't the sorry kind of guy. Sometimes he could still feel just exactly how blank he was about it.

He had his disagreements with his step-dad and the guy definitely affected his mom's decision at the time. Well, he might have been a freak but the jerk was a sorry loser and deserved to get his ass royally kicked by said freak. It got far enough that he endangered everyone in that house. After all, absorbing the electricity and attacking people with it wasn't exactly safe.

He could remember his mother's expression, not that he could ever understand exactly what they meant. They were different levels of fear, panic and pain. He didn't get that part. He hadn't even hurt her yet.

So off he went to New York city. Beautiful city of lights where the thugs could punch his brains out if he didn't fight back. He got worse. Sort of. Maybe he just got better at appreciating the punching, the stealing, the killing.

Whatever. He wasn't going to analyze things. He was the worst person for that kinda trick.

Gwen would probably have been able to. Maybe. Sometimes, she looked unsure herself. When her thin eyebrows knitted up at him for a very small moment, that was one. Probably. He noticed that stuff because he focused a lot on her. Maybe she thought not understanding him was attractive and mysterious. Maybe that was her not trying to get him but instead worrying about him.

He really sucked at that analyzing crap.

He was still to new to the sensations. She was there to hold his hand and that was probably what made it worthwhile despite all his frustrations with it.

So now he had his training wheels on. For emotions and crud.

'Cause, what the hell, he's dug himself so deep there was really no other way than dig himself even deeper. The truth was, that lie that started it off had taken him somewhere comfortable. Somewhere nice and pleasant.

A place where he was best friends with the kid he had been trying to murder just a few years ago. A place where his mom and him were under the same roof and he still hasn't done anything dangerous or manipulative or selfish to screw things up. A place where there was something else other than anger, which he had in spades. A place where _she_ was there when he turned around, instead of a cold unwelcoming city or the Null Void glaring him down.

He didn't hold a lot of emotions for too long - even anger - because he fashioned himself to be that way. It made things easier. It was difficult to unlearn those things. But he was getting there.

"_No harm done. He ejected and his parachute's only a little on fire."_

Eh. Old habits were hard to break. Some lives were still expendable. But he was getting there.

* * *

_A/N: _My very first fic was originally going to be a story called 'The Therapy of Kevin Levin'. Oh, yes. It was supposed to be set within the five year gap between the original series and Alien Force. It was an extensive, multi-chapter, humorous take at how Kevin became less, uh, troubled. XD It was going to be Gwevin because it was also going to go for as far into the first few episodes of Alien Force.

Fascinating, huh? I was supposed to make my first introduction into the Ben 10 fandom through Gwevin until Benlie distracted me. So this fic is like me finally condensing all that I'd planned into that fic into a one-shot. D: So horrid and choppy. T_T


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